In the strawberry season, hundreds of women are employed to carry that
delicate fruit to market on their heads; and their industry in
performing this task is as wonderful, as their remuneration is unworthy
of the opulent classes who derive enjoyment from their labour. They
consist, for the most part, of Shropshire and Welsh girls, who walk to
London at this season in droves, to perform this drudgery, just as the
Irish peasantry come to assist in the hay and corn harvests. I learnt
that these women carry upon their heads baskets of strawberries or
raspberries, weighing from forty to fifty pounds, and make two turns in
the day, from Isleworth to market, a distance of thirteen miles each
way; three turns from Brentford, a distance of nine miles; and four
turns from Hammersmith, a distance of six miles. For the most part, they
find some conveyance back; but even then these industrious creatures
carry loads from twenty-four to thirty miles a-day, besides walking back
unladen some part of each turn! Their remuneration for this unparalleled
slavery is from 8_s_. to 9_s_. per day; each turn from the distance of
Isleworth being 4_s_. or 4_s_. 6_d_.; and from that of Hammersmith 2_s_.
or 2_s_. 3_d_. Their diet is coarse and simple, their drink, tea and
small-beer; costing not above 1_s_. or 1_s_. 6_d_. and their back
conveyance about 2_s_. or 2_s_. 6_d_.; so that their net gains are about
5_s_. per day, which, in the strawberry season, of forty days, amounts
to 10_l_. After this period the same women find employment in gathering
and marketing vegetables, at lower wages, for other sixty days, netting
about 5_l_. more. With this poor pittance they return to their native
county, and it adds either to their humble comforts, or creates a small
dowry towards a rustic establishment for life. Can a more interesting
picture be drawn of virtuous exertion? Why have our poets failed to
colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their favourite
shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! For beauty,
symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs of
Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia! Their
morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support
aged parents, or to keep their own children from the workhouse! In keen
suffering, they endure all that the imagination of a poet could desire;
they live hard, they sleep on straw in hovels and barns, and they often
burst an artery, or drop down dead from the effect of heat and
over-exertion! Yet, such is the state of one portion of our female
population, at a time when we are calling ourselves the most polished
nation on earth.
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